31/01/2013 - At Sweden's Göteborg International Film Festival, the Startsladden Award – one of the film world's most prestigious prizes for a short – went to Babak Najafi's The Day My Dad Was Shot

“I was deeply moved when it happened, and I have carried it with me for 14 years. Finally got the opportunity to make a film about it,” said Swedish director Babak Najafi (photo), when he received the Startsladden Award - one of the film world’s most prestigious prizes for a short, which comes with cash and services worth €81,000 – for The Day My Dad Was Shot at the Göteborg International Film Festival.

Najafi, whose Easy Money II took 323,475 admissions in Sweden last year, talked about the event in 1992, when Sweden’s Laser Man – a murderer, bank robber and attempted serial killer – shot Isa Aybar, a year before Aybar's son Gabriel was born. He met them both in 1998, when it was still part fiction, part reality, to Gabriel; in the film he discusses it with his father.

Swedish veteran director Stefan Jarl, whose A Decent Life (1979) won a Guldbaggar – Sweden’s national prize – for Best Film and Best Director, and is still the most seen Swedish documentary in modern times, has since made 17 films – the latest, Goodness, received the Church of Sweden Award.

“With compelling seriousness and humor, Goodness portrays our money-driven society, where man and the values of life are marginalised - it makes us see what we are losing," the jury declared. The film will be domestically released by Folkets Bio on February 15.

Swedish director Niclas Larsson’s Water was awarded Göteborg’s Big Novella Film Award, which is accompanied by a €23,000 cheque, for his Water, about a 16-year-old girl who falls in “young unconditional love.” Both the Starsladden and Novella Film competitions are organised with the Swedish Film Institute and Swedish pubcaster SVT, which will air all the entries.